The tricky part is not so much getting Audiophile Linux 3.0 installed, but getting your music library set up correctly. So although Audiophile Linux is free, it will require some time and effort on your part to get it up and running successfully (unless you are already familiar with Linux). For those not familiar with Linux, even simple settings can be a mystery (at least at first). You will need to make certain settings yourself, rather than relying on a program doing that for you. Now, at this point, it is only fair to warn anybody not familiar with Linux operating systems, that they are a lot more demanding than something like Windows. In theory this makes installing Audiophile Linux v3.0 easier. Then, instead of having to install the whole system, the drivers, and the individual software applications again, everything is restored in one go. Many people use these images to back up their system in case something goes wrong.

For those of you are not computer buffs, an image is a kind of snapshot of what your hard drive contains when the image is created. With Audiophile Linux v3.0, Marko Lerota also adopted a new way of installing it by essentially restoring an image.

Audiophile Linux starts with almost nothing and adds in the services necessary to play the music. If you think of it, it is the opposite strategy to starting with a fully featured system such as Windows, and then closing down all the services that you don't want with something such as Fidelizer. Arch Linux is a very basic operating system where the developer has to add in the services that are required.

The approach that he took was to ditch Linux Mint altogether, and use something called Arch Linux. I was impressed then, but Marko Lerota who produces Audiophile Linux wasn't content, and looked to make improvements. I first looked at Audiophile Linux in it's second version in this review (November 2013). For those that baulk at the prospect of paying for Windows and Fidelizer, here is the poor man's audiophile operating system, or at least one of them. I recently reviewed a piece of software called Fidelizer, that works with Windows operating systems to enhance the sound quality from computers used as music servers.

Product name: Audiophile Linux music server operating system. Audiophile Linux music server operating system and building a budget music server

Jriver music server